catalyst drivers?

[BeZ]

wondering, what are the best catalyst drivers for the radeon 9700?
performace wise

 

[Willamette_sucks]

catalyst 2.5s, the 3.0s have more features but my friend tried em on his 9500 pro and big performance drop! like a thousand points in 3dmark. maybe the later versions will be better but the 3.0s suck.

The first LAN party I went to was at a PETA convention. They booted me when I shot a crab in HL!

 

[chuck232]

I found the catalyst 3.0 are great. I've actually noticed a performance increase, at least in UT2003. I think the other guy botched the install.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[phsstpok]

When I first loaded 3.0 I got about a 50 point gain in 3DMark2001 SE but Anisotropic filtering in D3D wasn't working. Thinking I might need the new ATI control panel I gave it a try and lost 270 points and AF in D3D still isn't working. This is 470 points worse than I was getting with pre-Catalyst drivers (I have a Radeon 8500). This is progress?

I'm going back to Catalyst 2.4 because I also had problems with 2.5. Textures were being rendered incorectly in UT2003.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[AMD_Man]

Well, I was having issues (DX games crashing) with the Catalyst 3 drivers and DirectX until I realized the issue was with DX9 and not the Catalyst driver. When I reformatted and installed just the Catalyst 3 without DX9, everything ran fine.

Intelligence is not merely the wealth of knowledge but the sum of perception, wisdom, and knowledge.

 

[phsstpok]

I don't use DirectX 9 only 8.1b. I only have an 8500 so I'm not sure what there is to be gained from DX9 anyway.

However, being this is an old mobo with a Via chipset drivers get "broken" real easily. Normally when I run into a video problem I perform a clean install of the 4-in-1 drivers, video drivers, and DirectX. I was lazy and didn't do it this time but I will do it and I'll give Catalyst 3.0 one more shot.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>